Could Hilary Putnam Have Been a Brain in a Vat?: Three Arguments against Reference, Part 1

Posted on by under Perception, structural realism

In previous posts (such as this one and this one), I have sometimes alluded to the philosophy of structural realism. Structural realism says that we are unable to know the intrinsic character of the world outside our minds, although we are able to know a great deal about the structure of that world, especially its causally relevant features. Thus, we can know what we need to know to survive and thrive in our environment, we just can’t know what it is like intrinsically. For instance, we cannot know whether the surfaces of objects have the colors they appear to have in our visual perceptions of them or the hot and cold qualities we feel them to have, etc. Even the intrinsic character of spatial relations may not be as it appears to us. Still, the structure and dynamics of all these things is accessible to us—which is fortunate, because that is what matters for successful action.

I think structural realism is true and indeed inescapable. However, discussion of it in philosophy today is blighted by obsession with something called “Newman’s Objection,” after Max Newman, a Cambridge mathematician who published an important critique of Bertrand Russell’s version of structural realism as advanced in Russell’s book, The Analysis of Matter (1927). In my view, Newman rightly identified an important flaw in Russell’s structural realism, but not in structural realism per se, which has many options available for removing the difficulty. Unfortunately, many philosophers today, including many structural realists, treat Newman’s Objection against Russell (and subsequent formulations essentially like Russell’s), unless it can be refuted somehow, as a decisive refutation of structural realism itself. The result has been a lamentable lack of progress in developing the implications and insights of structural realism.

In what follows, I will explain how I think Newman’s Objection should best be handled and why it is a paper tiger. However, I have chosen to do so via an analysis of a much more well-known argument that in its essentials is practically identical with Newman’s, namely Hilary Putnam’s “model-theoretic argument” against the possibility that the terms of natural language or of our thoughts and percepts can have determinate referents in the mind-independent world.

This means that “what follows” is going to be a long haul! If anyone wants to read the whole paper in one fell swoop, it can be found here. Here at PoT, I will send it out in five installments, of which this post is the first. In this first installment, I begin with Putnam’s own warm-up exercise: his argument that a “brain in a vat” would be unable even to think that it was a brain in a vat. (To skip to the second installment, click here.)

Continue reading →

person-directed anger and the way things should be

Posted on by under Uncategorized

If person A puts in a good, smart effort in attempting some task, we think something like this: it “should be the case” that she succeeds. Similarly, if B works harder and smarter than A at the same type of task, then it “should be the case” that B’s efforts yield more success than A’s efforts. (In this case, we might also think that it is fair that B have more success than A – and that it would be unfair if it went the other way around.)

What is ‘should be the case’ getting at in these cases? We might analyze the feature here in terms of appropriate response in attitude.

Continue reading →

Every Way You Look At It, We’ve Lost

Posted on by under Ukraine

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates’ debate
Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose–
Every way you look at it, you lose
–Simon and Garfunkel, “Mrs Robinson“

I didn’t watch the Republican debate last night. I don’t even remember what I did instead. I read about the debate this morning. I’m glad I missed it.

On foreign policy, the Republicans are divided over Ukraine, but united in their desire for war with Mexico, China, and migrants. That’s all I need to know to dismiss them from consideration. The Democrats have the mirror image view: united on war in Ukraine, divided and equivocal on the rest. That’s all I need to know to dismiss them. Continue reading →

“Persecution and the Art of Acting”

Posted on by under Fatwas, General announcements

I have a longish essay in the Fall 2023 issue of Isonomia Quarterly, a newish online journal edited by Brandon Christenson of Notes on Liberty. The essay is called “Persecution and the Art of Acting,” a take-off on Leo Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing. It’s an informal autobiographical account of my commitment to a Judeo-Islamic form of religious fictionalism.

Sample belligerent passage:

Jews, Muslims, and atheists all make claims to religious freedom, but usually make those claims under a single description–”Jew,” “Muslim,” “atheist.” As a fictionalist, I make the same claim to freedom under all three descriptions at once, reserving the right to add as many more descriptions as I wish. In short, when it comes to religious freedom, I demand the right to have things all ways at once, and demand the right to act on it without apology. Some may find that endearing. Others may find it offensive. I regard it as non-negotiable.

I guess we’ll see what happens when the first fatwas come in.

August 15: Front page treatment at Real Clear Religion. The irony. Ht: Brandon Christensen

irony

Fuller on Aspirations and Duties

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Fuller's Morality of Law

Having finished with Gerald Gaus’s The Tyranny of the Ideal, our MTSP Philosophy Discussion Group is now back to reading philosophy of law, working our way through Lon Fuller’s The Morality of Law (1964/1969). Fuller’s book is Roderick Long’s choice, part of a sequence of books on philosophy of law we’re reading at his suggestion, starting with H.L.A. Hart, passing through Fuller, eventually en route to the work of Ronald Dworkin. 

Having just read the first chapter of Fuller (and for the first time), I have to say that I find Fuller a refreshingly clear and engaging writer, much easier to read than, say, Gaus, Scanlon, or Hart. But clear as Fuller is, I don’t find his arguments in this first chapter sound. In this post, I want to offer a quick-and-dirty (but still, I think, effective) criticism of just one point he makes in the chapter, namely, his supposed distinction between “the morality of duty” and the “morality of aspiration.” Continue reading →

A Critique of Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Gerald Gaus's The Tyranny of the Ideal

Continued from part 1.

Then Gaus turns to coordination problems like Stag Hunt / Assurance game (213-15), which (he should add) also involve an independent dimensions of CAPs. It consists in an interaction-situation having more than one equilibrium, at least one of which is not P-optimal, so that arriving at the (or one of the) P-optimal equilibria requires coordination. It is crucial that in many of these cases, a mere convention like stopping at red lights rather than green lights can suffice; nothing deeper need underlie it. Sometimes the natural “salience” of certain phenomena, places, or things does underlie it (red, being associated with blood, is perhaps naturally alarming / arresting). Continue reading →

A Critique of Gerald Gaus’s Tyranny of the Ideal (1 of 2)

Posted on by under MTSP Discussion: Gerald Gaus's The Tyranny of the Ideal

There are a lot of good things to say about Gerald Gaus’ book, The Tyranny of the Ideal (Princeton University Press, 2016). It is a difficult work because it operates mostly at a meta-theoretical level, focusing on properties and problems of “ideal” theories of justice in general – although there is quite a bit of commentary on Sen’s theory and Rawls’s approach in Political Liberalism and after. Still, it contains may insights on these topics, and especially epistemic difficulties in discerning what ideal justice actually requires. But I will not focus on many of the good points here, simply in the interests of space. Continue reading →

I Don’t Wanna Hold Your Hand

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism, Ukraine

There’s been an outpouring of sympathy for the Ukrainian fencer Olha Kharlan for not shaking the hand of her Russian opponent, Anna Smirnova. Kharlan’s refusal was, of course, an impassioned protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The underlying assumption here is that an athlete in an international competition is in some sense a representative of her government, including its very worst policies. On this assumption, every Russian athlete is a representative of Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. Until January 2021, I suppose, every American athlete was a representative, whether chosen or not, of Donald Trump. Every American athlete right now represents our current immigration policies, up to and including that of pushing mothers and their children into the Rio Grande in defense of America’s southern border. Every Saudi athlete represents MBS’s evisceration of Jamal Khashoggi. Every Chinese athlete represents the repression of the Uyghurs. And so on. I guess athletes from Niger are, for lack of a government, exempt. Maybe Sudanese ones, too. Continue reading →

“Living Authentically”

Posted on by under General announcements

I’d meant to post this earlier, but it’s still not too late: my friend Monica Vilhauer is running a course on “Living Authentically,” focused on the work of Simone de Beauvoir via Skye Cleary’s new book on that subject, How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment. Starts a week from tomorrow, Sunday, August 6, 10 am-12 noon, Pacific Standard Time.

Img 17

I highly recommend every part of this package: Monica, Skye, and Simone. I know one of these ladies personally, one by social osmosis, and one by reputation: I’ve done a workshop on alienation with Monica through her organization Curious Soul Philosophy (which I very much enjoyed); I feel sure that I’ve met Skye somewhere in New York-area philosophy circles, but can’t remember where; and well, Simone de Beauvoir is Simone de Beauvoir. You’re guaranteed to learn something valuable from this trio–about yourself, and about the world you inhabit. 

Alienation is a problem easier dismissed than escaped or avoided: there are more incentives for wishing it away than dealing with it. But it’s there. And if it is, it’s a question where that leaves you as far as living authentically is concerned. We each have to answer that question for ourselves–however many of us that amounts to. This workshop will help.

Neutrality Loathsome

Posted on by under cancel culture
Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise,
Abhorre, and spew out all Neutralities.
–Robert Herrick, “Neutrality Loathsome“

When I taught college-level philosophy, one of the biggest obstacles to teaching, and particularly to successful class discussion, was students’ fear of dealing with controversial issues in class. Despite the bragging that Americans like to do about “free speech,” American students were far more reluctant to speak candidly about anything (or handle constructive criticism) than the college students I briefly encountered in Pakistan or taught in Palestine. By comparison with students in these impoverished and highly repressive places, American students were discursively speaking afraid of their own shadows. They seemed to need “permission” to say anything beyond the safely anodyne and cliched.  Continue reading →